Ms Jane Ann Duffy:

A great deal of work had been done on this, but it was a new area for me, so one of the first actions we took was to review that work. There are the reports, but there is also the background to those reports. The main question had to do with the potential implications of amendments and what issues arose previously. The recommendations are similar to those that were considered previously, so a great deal of background work has already been done. Obviously, a few years have passed since the task force and some of the work, so issues will have moved on. I cannot say for certain where the legal issues are concerned – we are not at that stage – but examining what was done and identifying the issues that arose previously has been useful. We have also looked at what we wanted to achieve in a referendum. Obviously, we want to achieve gender equality, but we have to drill down into the recommendations, their background and their aims.